Free Ravenous Ghosts by Kealan Patrick Burke Page A

business and it won 't be long before he tells me so. I stand frustrated, searching for some way to penetrate the indifferent murk shrouding him. His eyebrows draw further down the longer I watch however, so I go to my room, my heart pounding in my ears.
    As I gaze out the window, the clouds begin to separate once more, allowing the sunlight to dominate the sky as they had before I met the Sparrow Man.
    I am alone, cursed with a horrid, dark awareness that twists my guts into knots. Who will it be? My father, my sister?
    Sometime later I hear the front door open and a high-pitched voice filters up the stairs. Sheryl is home. Her job at the local Wal-Mart keeps her away from me most of the time, but when she 's home, I am her verbal and often physical punch bag. It has been that way for as long as I can remember. All the pictures that grace the hallway walls of us smiling and hugging were taken before we grew wise to each other and usually the idea of hugging her makes me physically ill.
    But I know I could stomach it now as I kneel on my bed with my elbows on the windowsill and wonder how she will die if she is the one to touch the sparrow.
    "Where's the dillweed?" I hear her call as she mounts the stairs. Ordinarily, this would provoke an equally spiteful and creative response from me, but today the rules have been changed.
    " In here," I yell and the door creaks open.
    " Howdy, butt-face."
    I turn around and her smug smile fades just a notch. "You sick?" she asks.
    " No, why?"
    " You look sick."
    " No. Come in. I need to ask you something."
    She frowns, already deciding that she isn 't interested but pushes the door closed behind her and walks over to the bed where she stands, arms folded. "What? You want to borrow my underwear?"
    It occurs to me then, as I sit on the bed and look up at her, that devoid of the mean streak she could almost be pretty. As it is, she is developing a deep wrinkle between her eyebrows from frowning so much and she 's trying too hard to make herself a blonde when her natural auburn is a lot nicer. "No. I really need to ask you to do something and I need you to take me seriously."
    She rolls her heavily mascara-ed eyes. "What? Want me to set you up with a boyfriend?"
    " Look, just shut up a minute will you? This is important. Make fun all you want later, but for now I need you to listen."
    I don 't want to say it, but know it's the only way I can get her attention. "If you don't, someone could die."
    Sheryl blanches. "What are you talking about?"
    " I told Dad already but he's too drunk to care."
    " Told Dad what?"
    " About the bird."
    " What bird?"
    And then I tell her everything. The park, the birds, Janus and the mission he claimed to be on to rid the town of evildoers. It sounds ridiculous to my own ears so I guess I shouldn 't have held out much hope of Sheryl buying it.
    " Are you smoking something?" she says, laughing. "Do you really expect me to believe this shit? Raining birds? Do you really think no one would have heard about that if it had really happened? That kind of thing is world news!"
    She leans close as if to whisper something but punches me hard on the arm instead.
    "Ow!"
    " That's for being such a little retard," she sneers and spins around. "You're lucky Dad's wasted or he'd probably smack the shit out of you for lying to him."
    I pound the mattress in frustration as she opens the door to leave. "And try growing up just a tad, wouldya? I've hawked snot that was more mature than you."
    She leaves me alone to ponder the horror I can sense drifting ever closer towards our house. An image of my father opening the front door and kicking the dead sparrow off the step comes to me and I feel the tears rushing up my throat.
    What if I touch the bird first? You said I'm not wicked, so what happens then?
    Would you really want to take that chance?
    I decide I do want to take the chance, not out of any sense of duty or heroism but because this is all so wrong. This is not how things are